Lawn Problems

I moved in to a new house a few years back and the back garden was a mix of paving slabs and stones, in an easy to maintain type of fashion.

I lifted the whole lot and laid turf as we like to have a lawn. it is only small, around 6m x 5m but it is perfect for us.

However, I really struggled with it last year, half was becoming too dry and seemed to be hard to keep watered, the other half was mossy and permanently damp. It is east facing, so the dry half is in the sun, the damp half in permanent shade.

Over the winter, it seems to have become uneven and compacted in areas and although the grass seems to be growing ok, i can see that as soon as i cut it, i am going to have bald patches. where the soil is just too heavy and compacted for the grass to grow.

I aerate the lawn regularly but this seems to have little effect and I have come to the conclusion I need to have far better drainage than i have now.

Is there any easy way to do this, or is it a case of lifting the whole thing along with a layer of soil and replacing it with a top soil/sand mix and re-laying the lawn?

Lumen

It doesn't seem like drainage is the main problem, or else you'd have waterlogging everywhere.

Sounds like more of a soil structure/compaction problem, which is related but not quite the same (good drainage, e.g. a slope or drainage channels, can mask a soil structure problem).

I wouldn't add sand - the tiny voids can be filled by clay and you may end up with concrete. You can use horticutural grit (small angular gravel) but if you're going to pull the whole thing up then you would need an enormous amount of grit to provide voids between neighbouring the pieces of grit.

Also, the problem with re-doing the lawn is that your attempts to fix the soil texture at a macroscopic level (by for instance rotovating) may further worsen the soil structure at a microscopic level. Plus it's loads of effort.

Maybe try top-dressing with a mix of topsoil, peat moss and horticultural grit.

Permanent shade is always going to be tough on grass. I've an area that was re-sowed last June, went great for a while, then I got cocky and over-mowed it, and now it's almost bare again.

Lumen

Lumen wrote: »

It doesn't seem like drainage is the main problem, or else you'd have waterlogging everywhere.

Sounds like more of a soil structure/compaction problem, which is related but not quite the same (good drainage, e.g. a slope or drainage channels, can mask a soil structure problem).

I wouldn't add sand - the tiny voids can be filled by clay and you may end up with concrete. You can use horticutural grit (small angular gravel) but if you're going to pull the whole thing up then you would need an enormous amount of grit to provide voids between neighbouring the pieces of grit.

Also, the problem with re-doing the lawn is that your attempts to fix the soil texture at a macroscopic level (by for instance rotovating) may further worsen the soil structure at a microscopic level. Plus it's loads of effort.

Maybe try top-dressing with a mix of topsoil, peat moss and horticultural grit.

I'll try that, thanks. It certainly sounds a lot easier than digging the whole thing up again.

I'm not getting any pools of water and the soil isn't very clayey (if that's even a word!) so it is worth a try

Lumen wrote: »

Permanent shade is always going to be tough on grass. I've an area that was re-sowed last June, went great for a while, then I got cocky and over-mowed it, and now it's almost bare again.

oh yeah, me too. it looked superb, until two days after i cut it